Search

One of the most significant episodes in recent history is the rapid economic growth of East Asian nations in the late twentieth century. Considered alongside Japan and China, the four [...]

While defeat in a war is a military event, the recognition of the defeat is a political act. The timing of the political recognition ... is only partly determined by [...]

I suggest that two features of Adam Smith's talk of justice and liberty reflect a priority on instilling duties, as opposed to instilling rights. The first feature has to do [...]

Last year marked the centenary of the publication of Frank Knight's magnum opus, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, which entails important and still neglected insights from a comparative economic point of [...]

The Indeterminacy of Neoclassical Value Theory At mid-twentieth century, the neoclassical mathematical theory of value culminated in Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu's (1954) model, which characterizes the static general equilibrium [...]

For many years, P. T. Bauer (1915-2002) was the 'dissenter on development.' Among other dissents, he demonstrated that foreign aid was ineffective. Today that view is held in higher regard [...]

Deirdre McCloskey is an optimist, and rightfully so, when it comes to the development potential of poor countries. As she notes, the impressive records of India, China, and other countries [...]

Gordon Tullock states that there are three motives for income transfers: 'the desire to receive transfers, charity, and envy' (1997, 6). The motive behind the vast majority of government redistribution, [...]

Thinking was Gordon Tullock's main interest in life. He let his thinking roam widely and creatively over his many fields of interest; moreover, Tullock is widely recognized for the robust [...]

While Joseph A. Schumpeter is classified as a pioneer of evolutionary economics in a wide sense and of entrepreneurship and innovation management in a narrower sense, Schumpeter is less known for his contributions in the area of scientific methodology and history of science. The paper deals with methodological premises in Schumpeter's scientific positioning. In 1908, in his Das Wesen und der Hauptinhalt der theoretischen Nationalokonomie, Schumpeter developed and pioneered his methodological individualism which is very much acknowledged. However, comparing these early positions with methodological writings in his History of Economic Analysis (1954) shows that he has not really shifted from methodological individualism to an institutional perspective that addresses the academic interplay and sees economic action rooted in historical predispositions, paths and social constraints. Keywords Methodological individualism * Institutional economics * Joseph A. Schumpeter * Economic methodology JEL B25 * B30 * B41 * F14 * F01 * F20 * O10, Introduction The paper deals with Joseph A. Schumpeter and his efforts to treat economics methodologically. Some authors argue that Schumpeter maintained his principal scientific positions over the course of his [...]

In reading George Borjas's lead essay in this issue of The Independent Review and his recent book, We Wanted Workers: Unraveling the Immigration Narrative (2016), it is impossible to escape [...]

MAN IS BORN AN ANIMAL and animal he remains--unless or until his spiritual or creative nature is awakened. Until then he remains a creature, a mere beggar of life prepossessed [...]

War has been the only means of really improving employment that is respectable. --John Maynard Keynes, Keynes's Lectures Peace and not war is the father of all things... Peace builds, [...]

In the 2001-02 academic year, when Richard Vedder was beginning his work on the causes and consequences of rising costs in higher education, the average cost of a single year [...]

Over the past decade, Richard Vedder has become widely known in academic, policy, and media circles for his work on productivity in higher education. In fact, however, Vedder (1996, 2000; [...]

Richard Vedder's contributions to academic scholarship over the decades span many subdisciplines in economics. Many of his earlier works focused on various issues in state and local government finance. In [...]

In their 1991 paper in Public Choice, 'The War between the Rent Seekers,' Richard Vedder and Lowell Callaway develop and test a unique theory about the interactions between the levels [...]

In an overview of his book with Lowell Gallaway, Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in Twentieth-Century America, Richard Vedder (1993: 1) states: 'Not only has the government contributed to [...]

Mariana Mazzucato's The Entrepreneurial State (2013) vigorously argues that industrial policy, rather than market forces, is the key factor in fostering innovation. For Mazzucato, the RM Phillips Professor in the [...]

In CAPITAL in the Twenty-First Century, French economist Thomas Piketty analyzes wealth accumulation and inequality under advanced capitalism. Moralists and students of papal thought will need to come to grips with its argument, particularly since Pope Francis's Evangelii gaudium is said to have posed radical criticisms of economic inequality. This article puts Piketty into dialogue with Francis's critique of economic inequality by arguing, first, that Piketty uncovers the kinds of inequality of which Catholic social teaching must take account, and second, that Francis's work contains the resources needed to show the moral significance of Piketty's findings. The argument for this second conclusion shows what is and is not radical in Evangelii gaudium's treatment of economic inequality. Keywords CAPITAL in the Twenty-First Century, Catholic social teaching, economic inequality, Evangelii gaudium, Pope Francis, property-owning democracy, solidarity, Thomas Piketty, In 2013, two men who had been largely unknown outside their professional circles burst onto the global scene: Pope Francis and French economist Thomas Piketty. (1) So meteoric were their [...]

Harold Innis is following me. I noticed him first when I was an undergrad in Economics. Then, it was not his Staples Theory that caught my attention; that was just [...]

James M. Buchanan was a contractarian. I am not. (1) But I share Buchanan's classical-liberal ideals. (2) In my account of what I regard as Buchanan's classical-liberal views, I start [...]

We learned many things from Jim Buchanan. Among the more important is that titles should be felicitous. Ours here is ambitious, perhaps presumptuous, even slightly mischievous (as we shall shortly [...]

Objectivity ... is now conceived as inter-subjectivity. Inter-subjective norms are not agreed to by the members of a society because they are objective, but, in effect, become objective because they [...]

Introduction In this article I will discuss Mises' famous argument concerning economic calculation under socialism. I will point out that there are in fact two components of this argument. The [...]

Joseph Schumpeter's famous Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy articulates a minimalist theory of democracy that he contrasts with what he calls the 'classical doctrine of democracy.' This 'classical doctrine' appears to be a thinly veiled democratic interpretation of Rousseau's social contract, although Schumpeter rarely mentions Rousseau. The use of the concept of the general will, including the direct use of the French phrase volonte generale often associated with Rousseau, makes this apparent. Although Rousseau seems on the surface an odd choice as the archetypal democrat, Schumpeter's reading of him has some merit; Rousseau's social contract can be a democratic society in a certain sense ofthe word. Rousseau, furthermore, provides an adequate defense against the criticisms Schumpeter makes against his theory. This article uses Rousseau's ideas to argue against Schumpeter's minimalist model and in favor of what he calls the classical doctrine ofdemocracy. Keywords: Political Theory, Democracy and Civil Society, Participation/Citizenship, General Will. El famoso trabajo de Schumpeter Capitalismo, Socialismo y Democracia expresa una teoria de la democracia minimalista que el contrasta con lo que llama la 'teoria clasica de la democracia.' Esta 'doctrina clasica'parece ser una interpretation encubierta del contrato social de Rousseau. El uso del concepto de la voluntad general, incluyendo el uso directo de la frase francesa volonte generale,a menudo asociada a Rousseau, hace esto aparente. Aunque a primera vista Rousseau parece una election extraha como el democrata ideal, la interpretacion de Schumpeter tiene su merito; el contrato social de Rousseau puede ser de cierto modo una sociedad democratica, ademas, provee una defensa adecuada en contra de las criticas que Schumpeter hace de su teoria. Este articulo utiliza las ideas de Rousseau para argumentar en contra del modelo minimalista de Schumpeter y apoyar lo que el llamaba la doctrina clasica de la democracia., Joseph Schumpeter s Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (2008) articulates a critique of and an alternative to classical versions of liberal democracy. There is much to praise in his minimalist model [...]

Counterfeiting is, and should be, a crime. It involves theft by deception, and the stealing of goods or other valuables using false claims to money. But what about counterfeiting money that is already counterfeit? In Block's interpretation, such an action amounts to seizing stolen goods from a thief. Counterfeiting simply relieves the original counterfeiter of his ill gotten gains and is therefore not theft itself. The present article offers a critique of this thesis of Block's on the basis that counterfeiting money involves the theft of property from innocent people.

There has been considerable debate within the social sciences about the consequences of rapid population growth. The law of population, as described by Thomas Robert Malthus, asserts that population growth is ultimately limited by the means of subsistence, and therefore preventive checks on population growth (e.g., voluntarily limiting the number of births) are necessary to avoid the grim prospect of inevitable human suffering when the means of subsistence cannot support the population. Economists, demographers, and other social scientists have produced volumes of exegesis on Malthus's work. This article assesses how representative economists of the Austrian School have interacted with Malthus's law of population.

The problem of scarcity is often talked about, but it is rarely clearly defined. In this article, two different views of scarcity are outlined: absolute and relative scarcity. These two are respectively exemplified by Malthus's and Robbins's views of scarcity. However, both of these views tend to naturalize and universalize scarcity, and thus overlook abundance and sufficiency, which are important states in the social provisioning process. It is argued that this is due to ignorance of the sociocultural causal underpinnings of scarcity, abundance, and sufficiency (SAS). The introduction of these mechanisms enables further conceptual differentiation of SAS (e.g., quasi-, artificial-, natural-).

The term social justice comes up frequently in circles concerned with political and economic policy. Although it is often ill defined, it generally rests on two overriding principles. First, social [...]

The global economy is battling financial crisis and recession on an unprecedented scale. Reisman's book Democracy and Exchange reviews the contributions of a number of thinkers including Adam Smith and Joseph Schumpeter to the task of making ordinary people feel tolerably happy with the outcomes that affect their lives. The article argues that although Smith is viewed as the principal figure in the Scottish political economy tradition, there are other writers, notably John Rae whose ideas may have more contemporary relevance than those of Smith. A return to the ideas of Rae and Schumpeter, particularly on fiscal policy, may provide important insights into the financial crisis. Keywords: fiscal policy; John Rae; Scottish political economy tradition., Introduction Reisman's distinguished academic career has been built on a series of books in which he has analysed and interpreted the thought of such leading economists, sociologists and politicians as [...]

It is well known how in his later years, Alfred Marshall became less enamored with equilibrium methods of reasoning in economics and advocated instead the study of [evolutionary] biology. Some have alleged that Marshall's change of heart is what led him to abandon the project of preparing the second volume of his Principles of Economics. In this paper I deny that it was Marshall's commitment to evolutionary biology that held back volume 2. Rather, it may have been his stubborn commitment to a particular variant of evolutionary biology (that is, Spencer's version of evolutionary biology) that blinded him to the way a more far reaching synthesis of Darwinian and equilibrium notions might have been accomplished. The application of the modern biological synthesis might have enriched some of Marshall's earlier equilibrium notions such as the 'representative firm'. RESUME. Il est bien connu que, dans ses vieux jours, Alfred Marshall devint moins amourache des methodes de raisonnement de l'equilibre en economique et preconisait a la place l'etude de la biologie (evolutionniste). Certains ont allegue que c'est ce changement de noyau qui a conduit Marshall a abandonner son projet de preparation d'un second volume de ses Principes. Cet article denie que ce soit son engagement dans la biologie evolutionniste qui empecha le volume 2. Il se pourrait bien plutot que ce soit son engagement tetu dans une variante particuliere de la biologie evolutionniste (c'est-a-dire, la version de Spencer) qui lui ait bouche la voie d'une synthese de plus longue portee entre les notions de l'equilibre et de Darwin. L'application de la synthese biologique moderne aurait pu enrichir certaines des notions de l'equilibre initial de Marshall telles que celle de 'firme representative'.

Whately is a difficult thinker, partly because he is competent in so many disciplines. Joseph Schumpeter, who straggled with Whatley's 'elusive' greatness, saw a systematic core in Whately: the force behind Nassau Senior's axiomatics. Whately's contemporaries did not talk of axiomatics, but they did point out that his work depended upon an unusually small number of authorities, that is, Aristotle, Bacon, and Smith. In our interpretation, these foundational sources gave Whately three guiding principles to characterize all human activity: innate sociability, innate self-love, and costly mental activity. Self-love includes a desire to know and a desire to share knowledge. These principles, coupled with a normative principle of fairness, constitute the basis for his science of reciprocal exchange, or catallactics. Violations of fairness motivate his multidimensional reform proposals. For Whately, fairness requires transparency, and the demands of transparency for tractions is literally Gospel.

This paper is a part of an attempt to develop an economic philosophy of ontology based on the Continental tradition of hermeneutics. Ontology explores the meanings of entities as the objects of knowledge to posit the orientation of knowledge. Heidegger developed hermeneutical ontology, focusing on the self-understanding of Dasein (human beings), which consists of the 'projection' of its possibilities into the future and the 'thrownness' of it into the restrictions by the past history. Dealing explicitly with the pre-structure of knowledge, hermeneutics opens the perspective of knowledge much broader than permitted by the analytical tradition of philosophy. It is the contention of this paper that Schumpeter from the Austrian subjectivist circle could cope with this approach in social science by the use of the concepts of 'innovation and tradition' or 'creation and routine.' The paper discusses the relationship between Heidegger and Schumpeter on various philosophical issues and derives what might be called the Heidegger = Schumpeter theses.

An analysis of Thomas Schelling's work entitled 'Strategy of Conflict' is provided. It is believed that Schelling played an important role in stimulating the development of non-cooperative game theory by focusing on the critical importance of information and commitment in strategic dynamics. An analysis of economics' place in the social sciences is also presented.

The author responds to Olivier Rubin's critique of his paper, which criticizes economist Amartya Sen's famine philosophy. He considers the critique with regard to David Hume's philosophy on human knowledge and says that Rubin's critique has weak logic. The author's defense about his critique on Sen's entitlement approach is discussed.

Objections expressed by Khandakar Qudrat-I Elahi against economist Amartya Sen's famine analysis framework are contested, citing the Sen's entitlement approach on famine analysis remains a relevant framework even 30 years after it was proposed. Supplementary analysis on meso and micro levels are presented to address changes in contemporary famines.